


Incorrect

by Monstrosibee



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Altered State of Mind, Dysphoria, hes very tragic and i wish we knew more about what was going on in his head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:01:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24555853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrosibee/pseuds/Monstrosibee
Summary: "It would really help if he was actually feeling like that predator, and not like a bot shaped hole in the world."
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Incorrect

It was always the clicking. Something in the way the femoral fuel lines twisted around down to his ankles joints made them click, click, click every step he took, and the tick of metal tubing on metal plating reminded him every few seconds of the curdling wrongness barely contained in his engine. It itched deep enough to feel like soured energon running through his lines, nonexistent frost crackling across his shoulders and chassis even as he patrolled the ridge in the cooling heat of the setting sun, teeth of his alt mode bared in its eternal growl.

Dinobot didn't consider himself a complicated person. He was a machine of pure strength and cunning, the pinnacle of a Predacon warrior. Pausing in his route, he took a moment to gaze down from his vantage on the ridge upon the ruined ship currently serving as the great Predacon base. His more precise optic scanned quickly for movement, then, satisfied, he loped back over the ridge and along the sandy edge of the stone cliff the bordered their base, keeping his spine flat and low so his heavy steps made barely a sound. Like the predator whose shape he had borrowed.

It would really help if he was actually feeling like that predator, and not like a bot shaped hole in the world.

The gentle drumbeat of his own footsteps made a good tune to wander his own thoughts to, and as he continued his nonchalant patrol, he tried to focus only on them, and not the click, click, click. Unfortunately, the ticks pushed that wrongness to the front of his thoughts again, and there wasn't enough strength left in his already tired systems to resist falling back into the same spiraling anxiety he'd been feeling for some time.

He was Dinobot. He knew that. He was a Predacon. He knew that. He fought for the pride and honor of the Predacon name. He, of course, knew that. 

Despite his confidence in those ideas, though, Dinobot didn't know much else.

Whenever he reached for more than what had occurred in recent weeks, all he got was a cloud of static and broken images, none of which he particularly recognized. It was as though the his drives had been poorly wiped, after being battered around in a solar storm and put through a mithril tsunami. After delving too far into those shreds of himself, his mind would suddenly snap back to The Predacon Cause, and he wouldn't realize something had happened until much later.

Several short hops took him from the top of a limestone shelf to the edge of a sandy beach, and off in the distant ocean, he could see some great creature surfacing and then diving again. 

Something tugging his foot nearly pulled him over, and Dinobot spun to snap at his attacker, only to find the twisted edge of a buried piece of driftwood hooked around his claws. He split it in half with a single unnecessarily strong snap of his jaws, spark still wavering too strong in his chassis. It didn't slow when the rest of reflexes settled though; it was wavering now at the click, click, click as the sound amplified the wrongness in his middle. 

Over the past weeks, he'd noticed something else interesting about himself: he was becoming more coherent. To most people, he assumed that would be a strange thing to realize about oneself. Coherency usually came and went rather quickly, with a blow to the head or a splash of cold water to the optics, and it wasn't a state to really dwell on. But to Dinobot, it had been gradual, and he was most certainly very, very aware of it in the creeping way one is aware of an imminent storm from the slowly darkening sky overhead. He couldn't quite comprehend what it meant yet, or much of anything outside of sensations and feelings and a vague dis-ease permeating every waking moment.

It had started with the sense of his frame being Incorrect.

He wasn't sure why. It was just Not Right, and he could feel it in the way he moved and the strength behind his cautious coiled gait. It was either too small or too big, too pointed or too round, too hard or too soft. It was Not Enough in so many ways, and when he wasn't feeling it physically, the click, click, click of the femoral fuel lines reminded him.

Those, despite their necessity in being a part of his living body he needed to pump energon throughout his joints and limbs, were Not Supposed To Be There.

Megatron was currently the leader, leader of the Predacons on Earth. He had pledged his skills and strength to Megatron, to further The Predacon Cause.

Dinobot would be a deactivated shell before he told Megatron these strange sensations and his increasing presence of mind.

The thought stopped him short, startled by such fierce conviction to keeping a secret from his leader. Serving Megatron was serving The Predacon Cause! Why would he need to keep anything a secret from him? What secrets did Dinobot even have to keep?

But a single tentacle of that wrongness in his engine reached up and towards him, and for a moment, he knew that something about how Megatron worked was also Wrong, but a worse wrongness. Not the kind that made Dinobot slightly itchy in his plating, but the kind that inspired white hot anger in his tanks, that ignited the energon in his fuel pump in the kind of way that was not just the usual burning of fuel.

He stared off into the ocean, grappling with the two concepts of Wrongness, and then started at the crack of thunder overhead. Tilting his head towards the sky, Dinobot watched the lightning as it shattered the sky for a moment, then turned back towards the base.


End file.
